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It had been seven days.
Seven days since Cass had split from Bruce to cover more ground. Seven days since she realised it was a trap. Seven days since she barely managed to get the message to Bruce fast enough.
Seven days since she wasn’t quick enough to evade the trap herself.
She’d huddled herself into a corner of the room she’d woken up in, glaring daggers at anything she so much as heard through the heavy iron door. Despite her lack of equipment, Cass herself was a weapon, and she remained coiled in her corner like a snake, ready to strike.
Still, seven days of basically no water, food, sleep, or human interaction were beginning to wear her down. Yeah, she could absolutely last another week, and another after that, but would she even want to?
Of course she would, she told herself, because she had to.
Cass stiffened as she felt footsteps approach the doorway. She rocked back, redistributing her weight, tensed, and –
Relaxed, as the footsteps continued beyond the door.
Cass sighed, and once another three minutes had passed with no other sounds, she allowed herself to slump almost completely against her corner. Her legs were beginning to stiffen – but she couldn’t bring herself to leave the corner. She was tired. She was hungry. She was thirsty. She was too – too vulnerable to expose her back to an attack.
She stayed in her corner.
——
It was night – at least, Cass assumed it was. The footsteps always reduced in frequency about this time, before picking up again later, for what she assumed was the morning.
Only this time, there were footsteps – long after the others had stopped.
Not only that, but they were footsteps Cass recognised.
Abandoning her post at the corner – because she could be vulnerable now, she could be safe – Cass leapt towards the door. Her knees clicked with the motion, and Cass hoisted herself up by her fingertips to peer through the small, barred window.
Cass waited in anticipation.
The shadows yielded nothing. No footsteps echoed through the hall.
Slowly, Cass lowered herself back down. She had thought… no. It would be silly to think that Batman would just walk leisurely down the hall. Wishful thinking. Wishful thinking that led her to expose her back.
She quickly retreated back to her corner, drawing her knees up to her chest.
——
Cass stopped accepting the food and water. Surely, if she was hallucinating, then it would be some kind of toxin. Something in her water.
Cass didn’t want to consider that it could be her own mind.
She was a sensory person – she knew she could trust her hearing, her feeling, her sight. What was she to do if she couldn’t? What if her ears whispered lies, her feeling felt phantom tremors, her eyes saw a mirage? Batman – Bruce had told her what to do. Find help. Administer an antidote. But Cass couldn’t find help here, and she had no antidotes.
She had nothing, so she had to take it as everything.
——
Cass was struggling to ignore the shadow in the opposite corner.
“They’ve probably given up,” the shadowy Steph said, reclining languidly on the uncomfortable floor.
“Shut up,” Cass said shortly, and turned her head.
——
The food had piled in front of the door. Just under the little door for the trays. Cass had found that the food gradually went greyer and greyer the longer it sat there.
——
Cass heard the familiar footsteps again. This time she didn’t bother looking through the window.
Like the others, they disappeared.
——
Cass startled awake – no, no, she couldn’t sleep here.
She shook her head, which only made everything spin faster. She hit herself in the side of the head, frustrated, and tried to get her bearings back.
Nothing had changed. The food may have been greyer. Cass drooped against her corner.
Noise, again. Cass closed her eyes. It was only as real as the other noises – which was to say, entirely fake.
The footsteps again, familiar, but they weren’t walking anymore. They stormed down the corridor. Cass could almost feel it in her skull.
She raised her head, unsure. This felt awfully real, even compared to her previous hallucinations.
Cass unfurled slightly as the noise grew louder, louder, louder, until the fog in her head subdued it again. Her vision tilted, which Cass ignored as she walked to the door.
The first bolt slid open with an unholy shriek, followed by the second, the third, and then –
Cass shot out of the cell, ricocheting off the wall opposite and down the hall to where she thought the exit would be. Or at least, that was how she had expected it to go.
In reality, Cass did shoot out of the cell – straight into the bat symbol.
——
For his part, Bruce did seem very apologetic about Cass’s bloody nose, but frankly, Cass couldn’t care less. She’d collapsed pretty much instantly, anyway, and right now she was just glad she could actually hold onto someone and know they were real.